How to Know What Kind of Skeleton Key You Need

Keys have always been endowed with a certain sort of magic. They have the power to reveal things that were unknown or obscured before. Fifty-fifty the word "primal" means a tool that opens physical, intellectual, or spiritual barriers. A key tin can requite admission to riches and treasure, or it might go on prophylactic closely guarded secrets, as in the fable of Pandora's Box.

Taylor Swift wearing a skeleton-key necklace.

Locks and keys can likewise be used to protect one'southward about valued holding or to secure the gates of a walled city, so having a central is both a symbol of trust and conquest. Dorsum in the day, keys were used equally a means to flaunt your wealth, as they indicated you had something worth stealing. Metaphorically, a key can expand knowledge or offer passage to other, metaphysical realms.

But, when I run across a daughter wearing a skeleton central necklace, like the one offered past Lauren Blythe Designs on Etsy.com (to a higher place) or the one worn by land-pop star Taylor Swift from BeMonogrammed.com (correct), I sometimes wonder what it ways to her.

When a woman puts an antique key on a concatenation and wears it around her neck, close to her heart, it could hateful any number of things, a mystery just begging to be unlocked. The precedent for jewelry as symbols goes back at least to Queen Victoria, who hardly e'er wore jewelry that didn't have a emotional message of love or mourning. On the other hand, information technology could just be mode.

Most skeleton keys are really bit or butt keys, such as all merely the flat one at bottom-center shown here.

Being a history nerd, I have to quibble a bit with the skeleton fundamental necklace trend. Let'due south offset with the proper name. Clearly you look at these rusty old antique keys and they have a Halloweeny quality to them, as they resemble slender arm and leg bones that could be rattling in a grave. The tops, or bows, of these keys often feature Gothic trefoils, the triple-circle motifs seen in medieval churches representing the Trinity, or quatrefoils, the four-leaf clovers representing the Iv Gospels. These bow shapes were thought to give the key the protection of God. And so, from this standpoint, the impulse to associate them with Goths and telephone call them skeleton keys makes sense.

The key to your centre?

Generally, though, necklaces fabricated out of skeleton keys do not, in fact, use actual skeleton keys. A skeleton cardinal is a specific kind of antique key that opens many doors (there we go again with the metaphors!). Just if you pick up an antiquarian primal and y'all're non a knowledgeable central collector or trained locksmith, you probably can't tell whether information technology'south a skeleton primal or not. Odds are the key you are attracted to for its design is just a single-lock central rather than a skeleton master.

This style of central, which was used for more than 1,500 years, is known equally a "bit" or "barrel" key. The bits are the teeth at the stop of the primal that operate the lock. Such keys tin exist called barrel keys when their shank, the long, os-like role of the key, is hollow, like a barrel of a gun. The other thing to know about antique chip and barrel keys is that their companion locks were tremendously like shooting fish in a barrel to pick.

I understand an antique key conveys mysteries that are ancient and universal, whereas your house or automobile primal merely suggests something much more practical and mundane, but at least newer keys really work.

These fine-jewelry pendants from Tiffany's obviously don't have respective locks.

The reason is that modern blade keys operate the pins and wards of a lock in 2 dimensions—not just one the way a chip key does—and so provide much more security. When I come across a daughter with wearing a scrap key around her neck with a eye-shaped bow, information technology screams to me, "The lock on my heart is extremely unproblematic to fissure!" Which, to exist fair, could be truthful.

The skilful news is, unless you want a fancy sterling silver primal encrusted in white diamonds and take no interest in owning an authentic piece of the past, antique keys are inexpensive. You lot can get 1 for around $i, put it on a concatenation, and voila! You take all the mysteries and treasures of your life embodied in a one-of-a-kind pendant. If you lot want your necklace to be every bit cute as it is unique, look for a bow in the French Rococo style, as locksmithing became an art for French metal workers, who made intricate, swirling, filigreed bows.

Here is some ancient key sociology, for Halloween fun:

• Keys should never exist put on a the table, as it leads to chaos and disagreement in the house.
• Keys in the bed can assist a woman in the process of childbirth.
• Keys in the shape of crosses help cure boils.
• Church keys—usually weighty iron keys with a cross on the scrap or bow—are particularly powerful, able to cure whooping cough and at-home unruly children.

This is an instance of an elaborate French-mode antiquarian bit key.

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Source: https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/unlocking-the-riddle-of-skeleton-key-necklaces/

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